The Armourer's Prentices Part 12

"For that there's remedy. What saidst thou of the Cheapside armourer?

His fellow, the Wry-mouth, seemed to have a care of you. Ye made in to the rescue with poor old Spring."

"Even so," replied Ambrose, "and if Stevie would brook the thought, I trow that Master Headley would be quite willing to have him bound as his apprentice."

"Well said, my good lad!" cried Hal. "What sayest thou, Stevie?"

"I had liefer be a man-at-arms."

"That thou couldst only be after being sorely knocked about as horseboy and as groom. I tried that once, but found it meant kicks, and oaths, and vile company-such as I would not have for thy mother's son, Steve.

Headley is a well-reported, G.o.d-fearing man, and will do well by thee.

And thou wilt learn the use of arms as well as handle them."

"I like Master Headley and Kit Smallbones well enough," said Stephen, rather gloomily, "and if a gentleman must be a prentice, weapons are not so bad a craft for him."

"Whittington was a gentleman," said Ambrose.

"I am sick of Whittington," muttered Stephen.

"Nor is he the only one," said Randall; "there's Middleton and Pole-ay, and many another who have risen from the flat cap to the open helm, if not to the coronet. Nay, these London companies have rules against taking any prentice not of gentle blood. Come in to supper with my good woman, and then I'll go with thee and hold converse with good Master Headley, and if Master John doth not send the fee freely, why then I know of them who shall make him disgorge it. But mark," he added, as he led the way out of the gardens, "not a breath of Quipsome Hal. Down here they know me as a clerk of my lord's chamber, sad and sober, and high in his trust, and therein they are not far out."

In truth, though Harry Randall had been a wild and frolicsome youth in his Hampshire home, the effect of being a professional buffoon had actually made it a relaxation of effort to him to be grave, quiet, and slow in movement; and this was perhaps a more effectual disguise than the dark garments, and the false brown hair, beard, and moustache, with which he concealed the shorn and shaven condition required of the domestic jester. Having been a player, he was well able to adapt himself to his part, and yet Ambrose had considerable doubts whether Tibble had not suspected his ident.i.ty from the first, more especially as both the lads had inherited the same dark eyes from their mother, and Ambrose for the first time perceived a considerable resemblance between him and Stephen, not only in feature but in unconscious gesture.

Ambrose was considering whether he had better give his uncle a hint, lest concealment should excite suspicion; when, niched as it were against an abutment of the wall of the Temple courts, close to some steps going down to the Thames, they came upon a tiny house, at whose open door stood a young woman in the snowiest of caps and ap.r.o.ns over a short black gown, beneath which were a trim pair of blue hosen and stout shoes; a suspicion of yellow hair was allowed to appear framing the honest, fresh, Flemish face, which beamed a good-humoured welcome.

"Here they be! here be the poor lads, Pernel mine." She held out her hand, and offered a round comfortable cheek to each, saying, "Welcome to London, young gentlemen."

Good Mistress Perronel did not look exactly the stuff to make a glee-maiden of, nor even the beauty for whom to sacrifice everything, even liberty and respect. She was substantial in form, and broad in face and mouth, without much nose, and with large almost colourless eyes. But there was a wonderful look of heartiness and friendliness about her person and her house; the boys had never in their lives seen anything so amazingly and spotlessly clean and shining. In a corner stood an erection like a dark oaken cupboard or wardrobe, but in the middle was an opening about a yard square through which could be seen the night-capped face of a white-headed, white-bearded old man, propped against snowy pillows. To him Randall went at once, saying, "So, gaffer, how goes it?

You see I have brought company, my poor sister's sons-rest her soul!"

Gaffer Martin mumbled something to them incomprehensible, but which the jester comprehended, for he called them up and named them to him, and Martin put out a bony hand, and gave them a greeting. Though his speech and limbs had failed him, his intelligence was evidently still intact, and there was a tenderly-cared-for look about him, rendering his condition far less pitiable than that of Richard Birkenholt, who was so palpably treated as an inc.u.mbrance.

The table was already covered with a cloth, and Perronel quickly placed on it a yellow bowl of excellent beef broth, savoury with vegetables and pot-herbs, and with meat and dumplings floating in it. A lesser bowl was provided for each of the company, with horn spoons, and a loaf of good wheaten bread, and a tankard of excellent ale. Randall declared that his Perronel made far daintier dishes than my Lord Archbishop's cook, who went every day in silk and velvet.

He explained to her his views on the armourer, to which she agreed with all her might, the old gentleman in bed adding something which the boys began to understand, that there was no worthier nor more honourable condition than that of an English burgess, specially in the good town of London, where the kings knew better than to be ever at enmity with their good towns.

"Will the armourer take both of you?" asked Mistress Randall.

"Nay, it was only for Stephen we devised it," said Ambrose.

"And what wilt thou do?"

"I wish to be a scholar," said Ambrose.

"A lean trade," quoth the jester; "a monk now or a friar may be a right jolly fellow, but I never yet saw a man who throve upon books!"

"I had rather study than thrive," said Ambrose rather dreamily.

"He wotteth not what he saith," cried Stephen.

"Oh ho! so thou art of that sort!" rejoined his uncle. "I know them! A crabbed black and white page is meat and drink to them! There's that Dutch fellow, with a long Latin name, thin and weazen as never was Dutchman before; they say he has read all the books in the world, and can talk in all the tongues, and yet when he and Sir Thomas More and the Dean of St. Paul's get together at my lord's table one would think they were bidding for my bauble. Such excellent fooling do they make, that my lord sits holding his sides."

"The Dean of St. Paul's!" said Ambrose, experiencing a shock.

"Ay! He's another of your lean scholars, and yet he was born a wealthy man, son to a Lord Mayor, who, they say, reared him alone out of a round score of children."

"Alack! poor souls," sighed Mistress Randall under her breath, for, as Ambrose afterwards learnt, her two babes had scarce seen the light. Her husband, while giving her a look of affection, went on-"Not that he can keep his wealth. He has bestowed the most of it on Stepney church, and on the school he hath founded for poor children, nigh to St. Paul's."

"Could I get admittance to that school?" exclaimed Ambrose.

"Thou art a big fellow for a school," said his uncle, looking him over.

"However, faint heart never won fair lady."

"I have a letter from the Warden of St. Elizabeth's to one of the clerks of St. Paul's," added Ambrose. "Alworthy is his name."

"That's well. We'll prove that same," said his uncle. "Meantime, if ye have eaten your fill, we must be on our way to thine armourer, nevoy Stephen, or I shall be called for."

And after a private colloquy between the husband and wife, Ambrose was by both of them desired to make the little house his home until he could find admittance into St. Paul's School, or some other. He demurred somewhat from a mixture of feelings, in which there was a certain amount of Stephen's longing for freedom of action, and likewise a doubt whether he should not thus be a great inconvenience in the tiny household-a burden he was resolved not to be. But his uncle now took a more serious tone.

"Look thou, Ambrose, thou art my sister's son, and fool though I be, thou art bound in duty to me, and I to have charge of thee, nor will I-for the sake of thy father and mother-have thee lying I know not where, among gulls, and cutpurses, and beguilers of youth here in this city of London.

So, till better befals thee, and I wot of it, thou must be here no later than curfew, or I will know the reason why."

"And I hope the young gentleman will find it no sore grievance," said Perronel, so good-humouredly that Ambrose could only protest that he had feared to be troublesome to her, and promise to bring his bundle the next day.

CHAPTER IX.

ARMS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL

"For him was leifer to have at his bedde's hedde Twenty books clothed in blacke or redde Of Aristotle and his philosophie Than robes riche or fiddle or psalterie."

CHAUCER.

MASTER HEADLEY was found spending the summer evening in the bay window of the hall. Tibble sat on a three-legged stool by him, writing in a crabbed hand, in a big ledger, and Kit Smallbones towered above both, holding in his hand a bundle of tally-sticks. By the help of these, and of that accuracy of memory which writing has destroyed, he was unfolding, down to the very last farthing, the entire account of payments and receipts during his master's absence, the debtor and creditor account being preserved as perfectly as if he had always had a pen in his huge fingers, and studied book-keeping by double or single entry.

On the return of the two boys with such an apparently respectable member of society as the handsome well-dressed personage who accompanied them, little Dennet, who had been set to sew her sampler on a stool by her grandmother, under penalty of being sent off to bed if she disturbed her father, sprang up with a little cry of gladness, and running up to Ambrose, entreated for the tales of his good greenwood Forest, and the pucks and pixies, and the girl who daily shared her breakfast with a snake and said, "Eat your own side, Speckleback." Somehow, on Sunday night she had gathered that Ambrose had a store of such tales, and she dragged him off to the gallery, there to revel in them, while his brother remained with her father.

Though Master Stephen had begun by being high and mighty about mechanical crafts, and thought it a great condescension to consent to be bound apprentice, yet when once again in the Dragon court, it looked so friendly and felt so much like a home that he found himself very anxious that Master Headley should not say that he could take no more apprentices at present, and that he should be satisfied with the terms uncle Hal would propose. And oh! suppose Tibble should recognise Quipsome Hal!

However, Tibble was at this moment entirely engrossed by the accounts, and his master left him and his big companion to unravel them, while he himself held speech with his guest at some distance-sending for a cup of sack, wherewith to enliven the conversation.

He showed himself quite satisfied with what Randall chose to tell of himself as a well known "housekeeper" close to the Temple, his wife a "lavender" there, while he himself was attached to the suite of the Archbishop of York. Here alone was there any approach to shuffling, for Master Headley was left to suppose that Randall attended Wolsey in his capacity of king's counsellor, and therefore, having a house of his own, had not been found in the roll of the domestic retainers and servants.

He did not think of inquiring further, the more so as Randall was perfectly candid as to his own inferiority of birth to the Birkenholt family, and the circ.u.mstances under which he had left the Forest.

Master Headley professed to be quite willing to accept Stephen as an apprentice, with or without a fee; but he agreed with Randall that it would be much better not to expose him to having it cast in his teeth that he was accepted out of charity; and Randall undertook to get a letter so written and conveyed to John Birkenholt that he should not dare to withhold the needful sum, in earnest of which Master Headley would accept the two crowns that Stephen had in hand, as soon as the indentures could be drawn out by one of the many scriveners who lived about St.

Paul's.